WASHINGTON - The Labor Department reduced the acceptable
levels of workplace exposure Monday to a cancer-causing metal, hexavalent chromium, but critics said the new standard still leaves thousands of workers at risk.

The new rule limits worker exposure to the carcinogenic metal
to no more than 5 micrograms per cubic
meter of air, a large reduction from the old standard,
but also a level five times higher than what had been proposed by
the agency two years ago. The old standard, issued in 1971, was 52 micrograms per cubic
meter of air.

Hexavalent chromium is used in chrome plating, stainless
steel welding and the production of
chromate pigments and dyes. An estimated 558,000 workers,
from welders and steelworkers to jewelers, are exposed
to its airborne particles that have been linked to lung cancer.
The new requirement "substantially reduces the significant
health risks" for employees exposed
to the material, said Jonathan Snare, acting assistant
secretary for occupational safety and health at the department, in a statement.

In a conference call with reporters, Snare said the 5 microgram permissible
exposure level, or PEL, "is the lowest level
that is feasible both technologically
and economically." He said the
standard would cost industry $282 million
a year to implement. He said it would
result in the avoidance of 100 to 145 cancers a year among
the nearly 67,000 workers that currently are exposed to
airborne
levels of hexavalent chromium of more than 5 micrograms.
About 88 percent of the workers are
in workplaces where airborne levels already meet or exceed the new standard.

" We understand and acknowledge there is remaining significant
risk at the new PEL," said Snare.
The department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration,
which is issuing the standard under
a court order, estimated that the 5 microgram standard
would result in 10 to 45 additional cancers over a lifetime
for every 1,000 workers exposed, compared to 2.1 to 9.1 additional
cancers per
1,000 workers under a 1 microgram standard.

"
This represents clearly significant additional risks to workers," said Peter
Lurie, deputy director of Public Citizens' Health Research
Group, the private advocacy group that sued to force OSHA to issue
a new standard.

" This agency had to be sued in order to issue anything. Now
they will have to be sued again to do
something that adequately protects American workers," said
Lurie in an interview. Public Citizen
and unions representing workers in some of the industries involved
maintain that airborne levels of hexavalent chromium should
be kept
at no more than 0.25 micrograms per cubic meter of air
to assure adequate safety. They also
argue the technology and economic cost issue can be resolved by dealing with various industries separately.

A study conducted by a group of George Washington University
researchers and released last week by
Public Citizen claimed the chromium industry withheld
from OSHA key data on the health risks posed by hexavalent chromium. It said industry groups gave OSHA selected data
suggesting only
the highest level of exposure led to significantly higher
risk of lung cancer deaths.

Officials from the Specialty Steel Industry of America,
a primary industry group, did not return
telephone calls for comment on the new OSHA standard. An
attorney for the trade group Chrome Coalition, Kate McMahon,
said last week the industry had not
manipulated data. Instead, part of a study it commissioned was never sent to OSHA because it was not
peer reviewed and
then was overlooked when the company coordinating the research
went
bankrupt.

Snare said Monday that the recent report by researchers
at the George Washington University's
School of Public Health and Health Services had been
taken into consideration, but "did not add additional
information" that would have affected the agency's risk assessment.

David Michaels, author of the report, called the OSHA standard "weak" and said
it would "leave a large number of workers dangerously
exposed to carcinogens."

" The chromium industry was able to convince the White House
to weaken the standard across the board, so science went out the window," Michaels
said.

Additional Information:

Environmental
Health http://www.ehjournal.net/content/5/1/5Excerpt:
While exposure to hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) has been associated with increased
lung cancer risk for more than 50 years, the chemical is not currently regulated
by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) on the basis
of its carcinogenicity. The agency was petitioned in 1993 and sued in 1997
and 2002 to lower the workplace Cr(VI) exposure limit, resulting in a court
order to issue a final standard by February 2006.